


please ask for help

by spacebubble



Series: Quodo Moods Mixtape [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Odo POV, Past Violence, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, not exactly the usual mixture of fluff and angst i tend to deliver but. you'll see how it fits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 02:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11454243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebubble/pseuds/spacebubble
Summary: It's early days on Terok Nor as the station's resident investigator, and Odo's disturbed after apprehending a serial killer - violence with a motive he can understand, but it's the senseless violence that really gets underneath his skin. He finds himself walking into Quark's and providing help, unaware that he's getting helped in return.





	please ask for help

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically gen but with allusions to some past violence (off-screen). vaguely indirectly inspired by some trivia footnotes for the voyager episode "[meld](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Meld_\(episode\))" and written in a summer afternoon. summer's the season for thinking about detectives i guess!
> 
> (bit of a companion piece/prequel to my main wip, written while bumping into writer's block for that - figured it'd work better as a standalone.)
> 
> titled after [the telekinesis song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhVNILQ-X_g) of the same name.

Odo walks through the corridors of Terok Nor, his thoughts in a muddled haze.

It’s the grisly instances of seemingly motiveless violence that disturbs him the most.

He had lied when he told Dukat he couldn’t be affected by violence.

Of course, Odo couldn’t physically be harmed like a fragile humanoid could. If any pieces of him were removed, they could be reattached like a drop of water meeting another, with no marks to signal the juncture. Unlike the victim he had seen...

Violence couldn’t leave any physical marks on Odo, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still feel affected by the evidence of it.

The victim had been so small.

He walks into the bar, and is almost surprised to find himself passing through the entrance. He must have walked here without thinking of his destination.

Not consciously, anyway. His mind felt jumbled, the matrices of his thoughts colliding together as they attempted to make sense of the senseless, the disgusting sneer on the killer’s face...

Quark looks up when he walks in.

Somehow the Ferengi always knows when Odo’s around, like a sixth sense, or perhaps a preternaturally acute sense of hearing.

Odo knows that Quark isn’t considered particularly attractive or even averagely attractive according to most humanoid standards of beauty. And there’s certainly nothing about Quark’s behavior to endear him to Odo, not in the year they’ve already spent in each other’s orbit, the countless little schemes that Odo has unraveled time and time again.

But there was nothing deadly about those schemes, nothing cruel - if anything, Odo must have spent more time saving Quark from trouble than catching him in the middle of it.

The Ferengi’s face is a strangely comforting sight.

“Hey, Constable.” Quark calls out to him from behind the counter, and Odo draws close. “I’d ask you what’s your pleasure, but you don’t have any!”

And Quark laughs to himself.

“I’ll find out someday, though,” he adds. “Everyone’s got something.”

Odo doesn’t bother correcting Quark like he usually would. He smiles a little. The Ferengi’s unreserved mood, so brash and annoying on most days, is a bright contrast to the darkened corner he had recently departed, the small corpse left behind.

“So what’s on your mind?" Quark asks. "You don’t usually come here unless you feel like talking.”

“I don’t feel like talking,” Odo says, even though he supposes it’s true. But for now, he’d rather just sit at the counter and watch Quark go about his business.

“So you say, and you keep saying.” Quark shrugs, then turns away to pick up some bottles. “It’s fine, you can keep me company while I restock the shelves behind the counter. I always get a little spooked when it’s emptier in the bar.”

“Spooked?”

Quark looks over his shoulder at him, pausing in the middle of placing a bottle up on a higher shelf. “Well, yeah. The rowdier customers tend to stay later. And they’re drunker. And sometimes they feel like ganging up on the local bartender.”

“Ganging up?” Odo immediately glares around the establishment, but sees nothing but the usual carousing patrons, each of whom he can identify by name - he made a point of learning how to identify all the Cardassians on the station, no matter how low their rank.

Quark stops what he’s doing to turn around completely, looking at Odo with an odd expression. “Dukat keeps them in line. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.” Odo glances back at him. “What do you mean, keeps them in line?”

“So they don’t go too far.” Quark blinks. “Um, not that it’s any of your business -”

“What are you hiding from me, Quark? Spit it out.”

“Well.” Quark looks uncomfortable. He lowers his voice. “Let’s just say that underneath all that charm and military discipline, they’re just as brutal as any other humanoid when they get drunk.”

Odo remains silent. He suspects Quark will keep talking if he doesn’t say anything, and he’s correct.

“Learned the hard way,” Quark continues, talking quickly, as if to get it over with. “It was before you came on the station, and I was a little too generous with the kanar - that’s why I don’t drink on the job anymore - anyway, I’m a chatty drunk. And I chatted about the wrong things, and a glinn got the wrong idea, and he had a few other friends who also got the wrong idea, and…”

Quark’s voice trails off, as if contemplating the correct words to say.

“I’m a scrappy fighter, but those Cardassians are something else, whew.”

“What were their names?” Odo asks, voice going tense. He’s already rifling through his mental database of records, cross-referencing dates -

“Can’t remember,” Quark replies glibly. “Anyway, nothing bad happened - my nose might beg to differ but the doctor patched that up real quickly - Dukat showed up and told them off.”

Odo blinks. “ _Dukat_ did.”

Quark nods. “Yeah. Thrax was off the station for a conference or something.”

“I’m surprised Dukat intervened.” Odo would need to ask Thrax for more information about this incident, or any other similar incidents that might have escaped the official security logs. The previous chief of security had been hard to track down, but he had taken a liking to Odo, and often had information that Odo wouldn’t have been able to discover on his own.

“He’s unpredictable like that. Thrax wasn’t a fan. I can’t say I am either, but…” Quark shrugs. “Worked in my favor for once.”

“Why would the gul ever intervene on your behalf?”

Quark glances down, breaking off eye contact. He looks at the bottles in his hands. “Guess he pities me. He’s always treated me a little differently after he learned about my father.”

At that, Odo leans forward. Something connects in his mind, sifting through the muddled haze. “Of course! I should have realized, his father’s also…”

He doesn’t say the word aloud. No need to be that blunt. He’s had enough bluntness for the day.

Quark glances back up, surprised. He had been cringing slightly. At Odo’s silence, he relaxes minutely.

“Anyway,” Quark finishes, “don’t worry about the officers.”

He returns to shelving the bottles.

Odo watches him, looking at the small proportions of Quark’s body as it turns away from him.

Quark almost drops a bottle but catches it in time. He seems nervous, overly conscious of Odo’s wordless stare.

This wouldn’t do.

Odo shifts himself over the counter, dissolving and re-forming himself until he’s standing behind Quark, who yelps in surprise when he turns around and sees Odo in such close proximity.

“Don’t _do_ that!” Quark exclaims.

“It was more efficient.” Odo reaches around Quark’s back to take a few bottles. “Where do these go?”

Quark’s face settles into a confused expression. “What?”

“These bottles. Which shelves do these go on?”

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“Helping you. I’m done with my security shift for the day.”

Quark stares at him, dumbfounded.

“Quark?” He holds up the bottles. “Where?”

“What’s your angle?”

“Excuse me?”

“What’s your angle, Odo?” Quark is still staring. “I can’t afford to pay you for helping me.”

“I don’t want your payment. This is gratuitous. Volunteer work.”

“Why in the world would you want to volunteer any work for _me_?”

“Rule of Acquisition 76. _Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies._ ”

Off Quark’s stunned silence, Odo shrugs.

“Fine,” Odo says casually. “I’ll put these wherever there’s an empty space.”

He starts slotting the bottles onto the shelves, one by one. The sounds are rhythmic and strangely soothing. It’s almost a tactile pleasure, noting the different smooth surfaces of the glass bottles, the blues and the greens and how they catch the light.

It helps him take his mind off the containers he had to prepare for the coroner’s inquest.

The bottles are all different shapes. They’re fragile as a whole, but dangerous if broken.

He handles them with care, thinking about bones and their vulnerability, and how grateful he is to not have any part of him that can break.

“Are you okay?” Quark asks, and his voice sounds worried.

Odo turns to look at him.

The Ferengi’s head is tilted, as if he’s listening to something that Odo can’t hear.

“I’m fine,” Odo says. “Trust me.”

“If you say so.”

Quark starts handing him bottles.

 

* * *

 

He walks Quark back to the Ferengi’s quarters after closing time. He doesn’t explain why.

Quark looks up at him from the doorway, hesitant.

“Thanks for the help earlier,” Quark says. He bites his lip. “Um. I’d invite you in for a drink, but…”

“I don’t drink.”

Quark nods. His shoulders seem to sag. “Right.”

“But I appreciate the thought,” Odo adds gruffly. He clasps his hands behind his back, peering down at Quark.

Odo doesn’t know why he still lingers. He has seen Quark safely to his quarters. There wasn’t even a current danger on the station, no more than usual.

The killer likely didn’t have any accomplices - he certainly hadn’t admitted to any when he was caught, and Odo had already ensured the holding cell force fields were in perfect working condition, thrice over.

So why did he still want to make sure Quark was safe?

“Guess I’ll… see you tomorrow?” Quark asks, more to break up the silence than anything.

“If I’m not too busy.”

Quark nods. “Yeah. Well, hopefully there won’t be any more serial killers on the station.”

“What?”

“Word gets around, Odo.”

“How did you -” A strange amusement fills him, and he can’t explain why he’s relieved that Quark already knew, that Quark has ways of learning information that Odo’s unaware of. He keeps forgetting that Quark’s survived this long without his help at all. “When did you find out?”

Quark shrugs. “Morn knows the guy who has to transport the killer back to Cardassian court.”

Ah, the Lurian. Odo hasn’t spoken with him much, but he’s always suspected the courier of having hidden depths. “Morn. Of course.”

“He’s seen some things. Not that bad in a while, though. Says you would’ve really laid into the culprit if you weren’t, y’know, the chief of security and all that.” Quark sounds… proud? Admiring? It’s a confusing tone of voice. “Looked like a damn hero.”

Odo thinks of the smallness of the body. If he had only been there a few minutes earlier…

“I don’t feel very heroic,” he tells Quark. “I was too late.”

“Yeah, well. We can’t all be perfect. Even you, Constable.”

Odo frowns. “I’m not trying to be perfect. I just want to hold myself up to a higher standard.”

“You and your standards,” Quark says, and it almost sounds fond. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Odo.”

“I’m not.”

“Of course you’re not. Anyway, save the energy for someone more deserving, y’know?”

Something Odo doesn’t have the words for begins to bubble up inside of him.

A friendly feeling, perhaps.

He nods curtly at Quark and his upturned face. “It’s late. You should be going to sleep.”

“Yeah, guess I should.” Quark bites his lip again, then glances down. “Well. Okay. Night then.”

“Good night, Quark.”

He watches the Ferengi close the door. The bubbling feeling disperses.

He’d see Quark tomorrow.

Odo turns around and walks away.


End file.
